Blog Voice AI™ — Play Your Posts Like a Podcast

You read it right! You can now play your posts like a podcast thanks to DropInBlog’s Blog Voice AI™.

Let me tell you more about this feature.

What Is Blog Voice AI™?

Blog Voice AI™ is our new feature that converts written text into an AI-generated voice.

How does it do that? you may ask. This feature is based on our AI system which breaks text into phonetic components and then turns these components into spoken language. And not just a single language but almost any language.

Now, won’t all DropInBlog blog posts sound the same? No! The Blog Voice AI™ listen-to-article feature is available in over 20 different voices, and you get to choose which voice you want your audience to associate with your blog.

Will My Readers Listen to My Blog Posts?

Recent podcast consumption statistics reveal that 47% of adult Americans have listened to a podcast in the past month. These statistics show that people like listening to audio content.

Add to that the convenience of consuming content in an audio format. Imagine you’ve just published a blog post. Your readers have seen it, but just as they were about to sit down and read the post, they remembered they needed to take their dog for a walk.

In a scenario where you only have written content, the reader will probably forget to get back to your blog post. On the other hand, if they can access your content by only pressing the “play” button, the chances are they’ll listen to it right away.

Your audience is also in control of their audio experience with our text-to-speech player, which allows them to adjust the reading speed, as well as revisit parts of your content by jumping 10 seconds back or 30 seconds ahead.

The bottom line is that with Blog Voice AI™, you can accommodate the personal preferences of all your readers.

What Are the Benefits of Blog Voice AI™?

Using Blog Voice AI™ on your blog is a great strategy for increasing user engagement.

How exactly does the listen-to-article feature increase engagement?

First, your readers can choose how to consume your blog’s content. Second, they can pay attention to your content even when not in front of their screens. Third, everyone has their own preferences. Just like some people prefer reading books, others prefer listening to audiobooks. Now your audience can choose how they’ll consume your blog’s content.

Another advantage of Blog Voice AI™ is that it is a powerful brand recognition tool. It gives you access to over 20 voices, all of which very much resemble human speech. All you have to do is find a voice that sits well with your audience, and you’ve placed your foot into the audio content arena.

You might also attract new audiences. According to Edison’s Infinite Dial research, online audio listening is at its peak with 218 million people in the US stating they have listened to online audio in the past month. The chances are some of those 218 million might notice that you have audio articles on your blog.

Last but not least, you can create audio content for your blog without audio recording and editing. Once you create a written version of your blog post, you’ll automatically have the audio version of it, too!

💡 Bonus tip: Blog Voice AI™ can also be an excellent feedback tool. Write an article, and listen to it. You might find a thing or two you can change to improve your content’s flow.

How Do I Know if My Blog Is Using Blog Voice AI™?

If the Blog Voice AI™ listen-to-article feature is enabled for your blog, you’ll see the Blog Voice AI™ player at the top of your articles.

If you don’t see the text-to-speech player, go to the Settings page within your DropInBlog admin account.

Scroll down until you see the section Blog Voice AI™, and toggle the switch below to turn this feature on.

Enabling the Blog Voice AI™ feature will open several customization options.

You can choose the language of your audio articles, as well as language variations.

Then, you can browse a wide selection of AI voices to find the one you think will resonate with your audience. We give you the option to filter the voices by gender to help you easily find the perfect narrating voice for your blog.

Once you hit the play icon next to the voice you want to hear, you’ll hear the default text from the text box on the right side of the page. If you want to hear some other text or check how the selected voice sounds in another language, just type the desired text into the Voice demo text box.

You can also change the player text. Instead of the default “Listen to article” text, you can display any text you want.

Once you’re satisfied with the changes you made, click Save All Changes.

Blog Voice AI™ and Multiple Authors

As you probably already know, DropInBlog allows you to create author pages for your blog’s writers.

And what does that have to do with our Blog Voice AI™ feature? Well, you can give different AI voices to each of your blog’s authors.

You have to enable the Blog Voice AI™ feature first for this option to appear on the author’s settings page.

Then, when you visit the Authors page, and click the pencil icon next to the author’s profile you want to edit, you’ll see the Blog Voice AI™ option below the author’s image.

Upon toggling the switch and turning the text-to-speech feature on, you can choose the language and locale of the AI voice, as well as select the voice you want to be associated with the selected author.

Then, when you click the Save Author button, all the articles that the author has written will be played in the AI voice you’ve set.

Essentially, not only do your writers have their writing “voice,” but they can also have their own audio version of it. How great is that?

I spent some time exploring the AI voices available with DropInBlog’s Blog Voice AI™, and my favorite male AI voices are Andrew and Jason. As far as female AI voices go, Elizabeth and Nancy are my top two choices. What are your favorites?

The Big League Awaits

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an example of a brand leveraging the audio content trend. When you search for “audio articles” on Google, the WSJ website comes up first in the search results. And in the People Also Ask box, people also ask if there’s a way to listen to WSJ’s articles. 

They found a way to associate their name with audio articles. If you listen to some of these articles, you’ll notice that they have only one (somewhat robotic) voice.

Clearly, text-to-speech has room for improvement, and DropInBlog is at the forefront of perfecting this technology. Our goal was to bring the best version of the listen-to-article feature to you, and we’ve done it.

Now, the ball is in your court, and we can't wait to see which of the 20+ high-quality AI voices you choose. Don’t worry if you don’t have a DropInBlog account yet – you can still test the Blog Voice AI™ feature by signing up for a free trial.

Over to You

That was DropInBlog’s Blog Voice AI™ feature in a nutshell.

We invite you to explore the available AI voices and find the best one to offer a podcast-like experience to your audience.

And if you have any questions, reach out to us anytime.

Happy blogging!